American Cinematographer - January 2008 - (Page 16) Above: Two of the train’s passengers — modeled upon Szczerbowski (left) and Lavis (right), who provided the eyes — enjoy a game of chess. Below: Walker puts the finishing touches on Laurie Maher’s makeup as he, Szczerbowski (crouching) and Lavis prepare to capture TutliPutli’s human eyes. “Then, Jason would analyze the animation and create what he called ‘the wonderbar,’ a gauge that tracked the movement of a puppet and the camera within a shot and used color-coded segments to break down each move. Third, all three of us would shoot the actor, first matching the lighting of the original animation, then working out the choreography and acting. “We used the Canon for medium and long shots and a Sony HDR-FX1 for close-ups, where the eyes needed to be in hi-def,” he continues. “The final step, after shooting the eyes, was compositing in After Effects. Jason would timeremap the video footage into the animation and then finesse every single frame’s position, size and color in order to seamlessly integrate the eyes with the puppet’s face. This was a method Jason created specifically for our film, and to our knowledge, it is a unique and utterly novel process.” Although Lavis and Szczerbowski often found themselves improvising solutions to the problems they encountered, much of their methodology was rooted in tradition. For example, when it came time to paint in the skies, Lavis researched how some filmmakers use high-resolution photo collages to create backgrounds in Adobe Photoshop. “That didn’t fit the movie’s aesthetic at all,” he notes, “so we painted all the backgrounds in oils.” Szczerbowksi adds, “We wanted very much to not be Luddites about this. At the same time, considering a problem only in terms of modern solutions is a kind of amateurish way of looking at things. That doesn’t really cover the spectrum of the history of illusionism.” Throughout the 21⁄2 years of principal photography, the greatest challenge proved to be psychological. “The most difficult thing about a project like this is keeping your heart in the right place for that long,” says Szczerbowski. Lavis adds, “Day five of a 16-second animation was the hardest part — the stress of being so far ahead yet not having the freedom to do a second take!” I 16 January 2008
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